By the third quarter of this year, it was doing better, having
sold 4 million phones.

But Apple sold 35 million phones in the same
quarter that Microsoft sold 2.8 million. Apple also sold 23
million phones in the quarter that Microsoft sold 4 million. And
if you really want to get some perspective, think about the
roughly 123 million Android phones that were sold, compared to
Microsoft's 4 million.

Microsoft's smartphone market share inched up from 1.5% to 2.4%
in a year, which is going in the right direction, but given the
overall market, that's still not saying much.

UPDATE: A reader asked why Gartner's numbers differ from the 3Q
numbers reported by Apple. Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi
explained that Gartner doesn't include the phones sent to
resellers but not yet sold to actual users. In her words: "We
measure sell through not sell in so basically Apple built
inventory in the channel."